An ongoing heavy spell in north-west and East India has cut back the rain deficit for the country as a whole to two per cent on Tuesday.

The deficit had reached six per cent after July ended up in the red to the extent of 14 per cent.

Monsoon flows have since bounced back smartly, bringing in back-up showers first in central India before cutting loose over west and north-west India.

The deficit in Gujarat, the worst affected after the monsoon played truant in the first phase, has since reduced drastically, and so too in central and east-central India.

The position is still weak over east and northeast India, apart from peninsular India. But a fresh spell of rains is expected over the west coast, central and north peninsular over the next week, according to an update from India Meteorological Department (IMD).

Global models too had hinted about this possibility from last week, signalling a flare-up along the south Andhra Pradesh coast, that translate into some rains for Vidarbha and Telengana as well.

If this were to happen, this would make for the best spatially distributed rain profile in the short-to-medium history of monsoons on show.

The IMD said that the interaction between a prevailing monsoon low-pressure area over Haryana and a western disturbance would continue to rain it heavily down over north-west India on Wednesday.

In fact, the “low” had caused the eastern end of the monsoon trough to shift to the foothills of the Himalayas. This is expected to bring heavy rains over east and north-east India over the next two days.

Active monsoon conditions over northwest and east India and freshly forecast rains across the west coast come in the background of friendly La Nina conditions having been predicted to return to the equatorial east Pacific